All words had power. But written words had a lot more. They still do.
So far we've talked as if extelligence is a single unified external thing. In some sense it is, but what is actually important is the interface between extelligence and the individual. This is a very personal feedback loop: we meet selections from extelligence through our parents, the books we read, the teachers who teach us, and so on. This is how the Make-a-Human-Being-Kit works, this is why we have cultural diversity. If we all responded to the same pool of extelligence in exactly the same way, we would all be the same. The whole system would suddenly become a kind of monoculture rather than a multiculture.
Human extelligence is currently going through a period of massive expansion. Much more is becoming possible. Your interface to extelligence used to be very predictable: your parents, teachers, relatives, friends, village, tribe. That allowed clusters of particular kinds of subculture to flourish, to some extent independently of the other subcultures, because you never got to hear about the others. Their world view was always filtered before it got to you. In Whit, lain Banks describes a strange Scottish religious sect, and children who grow up in this sect. Even though some members of the sect are interacting with the outside world, the only important influences on them are what's going on within the sect. Even by the end of the story the character who has gone into the outside world and interacted with it in all sorts of ways has one idea in mind and one only, to become the leader of the sect and to continue propagating the sect's views. This behaviour is typical of human clusters, until extelligence intervenes.
Today's extelligence doesn't have a single world view, like a sect does. It doesn't really have a world view at all. Extelligence is becoming 'multiplex', a concept introduced by the science-fiction writer Samuel R. Delany in the novel Empire Star. Simplex minds have a single-world view and know exactly what everyone ought to do. Complex minds recognize the existence of different world views. Multiplex ones wonder how useful a specific world view actually is in a world of conflicting paradigms, but find a way to operate despite that.
Anyone who wants to can get on the Internet and construct a webpage about UFOs, telling everybody who accesses that page that UFOs exist, they're out there in space, they come down to Earth, they abduct people, they steal their babies ... They do all these things and it's absolutely definite, because it's on the web.
A prominent astronomer was giving a talk about life on other planets and the possibility of aliens. He made out the scientific case that somewhere out in the galaxy intelligent aliens might exist. At that point a member of the audience put his hand up and said 'we know they exist: it's all over the Internet.'
On the other hand, you can access another page on the Internet and get a completely different view. On the Internet, the full diversity of views is, or at least can be represented. It is quite democratic; the views of the stupid and credulous carry as much weight as the views of those who can read without moving their lips. If you think that the Holocaust didn't actually happen, and you can shout loud enough, and you can design a good web page, then you can be in there slugging it out with other people who believe that recorded history should have some kind of connection with reality.
We are having to cope with multiplexity. We're grappling with the problem right now: it's why global politics has suddenly become a lot more complicated than it used to be. Answers are in short supply, but one thing seems clear: rigid cultural fundamentalism isn't going to get us anywhere.
THE BLEAT GOES ON
EXTELLIGENCE BLOOMED, faster than HEX could create extra space in which to apprehend it. It reached the seas and spread out across the continents, left the surface of the world, spun webs across the sky, reached the moon ... and went further, as intelligence sought things to be intelligent about.
Extelligence learned. Among many other things, it learned to fear.
The HEM filled up again as the wizards returned, unsteadily, from lunch.
'Ah, Rincewind,' said the Archchancellor. 'We're looking for a volunteer to go into the squash court and shut down the reactor, and we've found you. Well done.'
'Is it dangerous?' said Rincewind.
'That depends on how you define dangerous,' said Ridcully.
'Er ... liable to cause pain and an imminent cessation of respiration,' suggested Rincewind. 'A high risk of agony, a possible deficit of arms and legs, a terminal shortness of breath...'
Ridcully and Ponder went into a huddle. Rincewind heard them whispering. Then the Archchancellor turned, beaming.
'We've decided to come to a new definition,' he said. 'It is "not as dangerous as many other things". I beg you pardon ...' He leaned over as Ponder whispered urgently in his ear. 'Correction, "not as dangerous as some other things". There. I think that's clear.'
'Well, yes, you mean ... not as dangerous as some of the most dangerous things in the universe?'
'Yes, indeed. And among them, Rincewind, would be your refusal to go.' The Archchancellor walked over to the omniscope. 'Oh, another ice age,' he went on. 'Well, that is a surprise.'
Rincewind glanced at the Librarian, who shrugged. Only a few tens of thousands of years could have passed down there. The apes probably never knew what squashed them.
There was a lengthy rattle from HEX's write-out. Ponder walked over to read it.
'Er ... Archchancellor? HEX says he's found advanced intelligence on the planet.'
'Intelligent life? Down there? But the place is a snowball again!'
'Er ... not life, sir. Not exactly.'
'Hang on, what's this?' said the Dean.
There was, thin as a thread, a ring around the world. Spaced at regular distances were tiny dots, like beads, and from them more tiny lines descended towards the surface.
So did the wizards.
Wind howled across the tundra. The ice was only a few hundred miles away, even here at the equator.
The wizards faded into existence, and looked around them.
'What the hell happened here?' said Ridcully.
The landscape was a welter of scars and pits. Roads were visible where they had buckled up through the snow, and there were the ruins of what could only have been buildings. But half the horizon was filled with what looked very much like an etiolated version of one of the giant shellfish proposed by the Lecturer in Recent Runes. It must have been several miles across at the base, and extended upwards beyond the limit of vision.
'Did any of you do this?' said Ridcully accusingly.
'Oh, come on? said the Dean. 'We don't even know what it is.'
Beyond the tangle of broken roadways the snow blew across deep trenches gouged out of the ground. Desolation reigned.
Ponder pointed towards the huge pyramid.
'Whatever we're looking for, it's in there,' he said.
The first thing the wizards noticed was the mournful bleating noise. It came and went in a regular way, on-off, on-off, and seemed to fill the entire structure.